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By the way, I got attacked by a monster that destroyed all my most expensive buildings and rashly sold my ore and coal reserves just before I discovered I only have 3 months supply of both left in the ground. I assume there is no way to replenish ore and coal deposits, does that mean my only option to keep my microchip industry going is to import the required raw materials? Would that still be cost effective?

Edit: I guess it can be cost effective to an extent as it costs as much to buy as it does to sell.

You can get plastics and alloy with a recycling center, too. It's almost certainly cheaper to use a recycler than to import the materials (you could probably import ore and coal and smelt those yourself for alloy, and then import plastic to make processors and still turn a profit, but importing both alloy and plastic for processor manufacture will be barely profitable at the current market prices). Once my ore mine runs out, I'll be nuking it and the smelter for a second recycler with a stronger alloy focus.

New Davington Heights has invested heavily in consumer electronics and (assuming the city saved properly before I tried and failed to visit Rousseau Flats), now has a Processor factory, a TV production line, and a PC production line. So despite an operating deficit of ~§20,000/hr, we've over §1,000,000 and rising regularly. I intend to claim the Great Work in the corner I share with Tinpot Town for a Solar Farm shortly.

We've also had next to no disasters (he says, jinxing it). Just one zombie outbreak and a handful of fires.

I've been to quite a few; it seems fine if you do it in the middle of the night (2am) when the server load is better. Its pretty good fun actually. I was watching Choca's city when he had a tornado hit! One thing I have noticed is all but one time (last night) I was not returned to my own city but rather kicked to the login screen when leaving so perhaps best to keep that in mind at the moment less you find yourself out of the game again.

Yeah, I did that when I accidentally picked two sites. But now the site is totally gone, the blue square doesn't even show up.

Ok, well if it is doing that right now I will hold onto the second site with the hope that they will sort it out in the next few days. Else if I release it now it sounds likely that we will not get the location back. Sorry about that - I didn't realise that the game was actually giving me the site in the tutorial - I thought it was only showing me how I could in principle take a site.

1) Our 16 (15) player region doesn't seem to actually allow co-op between all the players. It seems like I can only make deals with the three town sites and great work site near my city. Is that what you guys experience?

2) My city is running out of water. I keep plopping new pumps, but they quickly dry out the ground underneath. I found a forum thread that suggested using filtered poo water, but I haven't tried it yet. You guys having the same problem and/or found a solution?

3) @ Naetharu: actually I abandoned my extra site with no trouble. The bugged out one was one I played on for about a half hour, left, and when I tried to come back later it just wasn't there.

Troubling times late last night, got hit by a meteor strike which ingulfed my city (which seems to be mostly made up of oil and other flammable materials) with the great fire of Oiliumbaya. My firetrucks all decided it'd be a grand idea to stick together and all put out the same fires...took far too long to finally get things back under control.

Since then, my tourists seem to have left for safer sightseeing spots, criminals are taking advantage of the hightened fear and I seem to have used up all my water trying to put out those fires. So having the same issue as you are there @SkippyMcGee, heard the same thing about using the poopshoot to bolster water, I may have to rely on that disgusting experiment to keep things flowing (in more than one way).

Having to close down all non-essentual facilties and scale back medical/police/fire services in an attempt to get control of my region...not even MaxisMan can save the day, it seems.

Oh, and the very foundation, my oil field, has less than a month remaining and was unable to fulfil the requirments for extended petrolium HQ improvements, leaving me dead in the poowater. Oiliumbaya may not survive...

1) Our 16 (15) player region doesn't seem to actually allow co-op between all the players. It seems like I can only make deals with the three town sites and great work site near my city. Is that what you guys experience?

I noticed that too and tried to post it on the region wall, but regions walls don't seem to work. You can only volunteer vehicles to, and buy utilities from, cities that you have a direct road connection to. But, if you have a mass transit system (bus terminal, ferry, etc) you'll automatically share things like Education with other cities.

Oh, and the very foundation, my oil field, has less than a month remaining and was unable to fulfil the requirments for extended petrolium HQ improvements,

You kind of have to game the export system to get the extended specialization. I had to build a Trade HQ with an Electronics extension, build a trade port with 3 processor depots, and then turn off processor exports until I had 23,000 crates of processors stored (which very nearly killed me. Had to take out multiple bonds, turn off education and public transit systems and raise taxes to a ludicrous degree to keep from going bankrupt), and then turn exports back on to get the 1.5 million in a day required to build the Consumer Electronics HQ. You probably have to do something similar for an Oil extension.

You kind of have to game the export system to get the extended specialization. I had to build a Trade HQ with an Electronics extension, build a trade port with 3 processor depots, and then turn off processor exports until I had 23,000 crates of processors stored (which very nearly killed me. Had to take out multiple bonds, turn off education and public transit systems and raise taxes to a ludicrous degree to keep from going bankrupt), and then turn exports back on to get the 1.5 million in a day required to build the Consumer Electronics HQ. You probably have to do something similar for an Oil extension.

I've also been going the electronics route, and managed to get the 1.5 million/day by building three processor plants. Balancing the imports of vast quantities of alloy and plastic was troublesome for my economy, but it got there in the end.

Hi Ridebird (not sure what your forum name is), I've been waiting for someone to be active in a neighbouring city, I notice you have build in a region with Coal and Ore. I gifted you 50k to help you get started up, no strings attached. If you happen to find yourself generating spare ore and coal and want to gift me some I'll be happy reimburse you ;) My electronics industry is struggling as my ore and coal reserves deplete.

Just had a very productive couple of hours, the addition of more recycling trucks and a low grade University have really managed to stabalise the economy at the moment. With the collapse of my oil fields on the horizon, I'm unsure if I should keep my current balance for the unexpected (around 500,000 with approx -5000 an hour) or blow it all on Big Ben.

I don't think things will remain smooth for long, water is a constant issue now and I'm starting to see the complexities of the game come through, maintaining a balanced workforce of differing income grades - seems I'm hugely reliant on my recycling plant to trade away the reclaimed produce and fleecing the handful of tourists my city gets.

Starting to encounter issues with upgrading zones too now pretty much every lats scrap of free ground has been used. "Yes, yes, you want a park...you can have one if we demolish your house. What's that? You'd rather not live in a park afterall?"

Oh, Oiliumbaya welcomed the construction of it's first $$$ building too, the city celebrated with fireworks and a chemical fire (the Sim's won't be happy 'till they've burned away every last drop of oil off our black stained streets I feel).

Edit: @Sletchseven, Europe West 2 is the server, still a handful of lots free for more players.

Gamed my high end consumer electronics exports and am now sitting on over seven million simoleans. Unfortunately, despite none of my schools being at capacity, around a thousand of my sims are not attending school (and some are complaining about it), which is causing my education rate to drop. I can still operate my nuclear plant safely, but I'm getting a little worried. And I'd really like to be able to add a med school to my University, since I don't believe we have one in the region yet. Approval for the Solar Farm is also taking longer than expected, but I have initiated research for the space port.

We've also been hit by a handful of disasters. It seems New Davington Heights is a meteor magnet, as we've had three separate meteor showers, all damage thankfully rapidly contained by our excellent fire department. A Big Lizard surfaced in the core of our downtown area, and mere luck had the beeline it took to our garbage dump be between our processor and consumer electronics factories (though it wrecked some storage yards in our trade port). We also had an earthquake destroy our high school and fire department, and an alien invasion that did nothing at all, as far as I can tell.

Here is New Davington Heights, with Tinpot Town and Rousseau Flats in the background (there's a third city that I'm unsure of the name of off the top of my head in the far back left)

Darn, I should have posted, I started researching the space centre a while ago and it just completed. I was thinking of actually starting the project because as far as I can tell, I should be able to supply almost everything for it except for the fuel. My city is having huge traffic issues now it is at 150000 pop. Can't seem to alleviate it much at all even after bulldozing some high value buildings to build more avenues. Interestingly I am earning almost -20000 simoleons per hour but raking in huge amounts of cash from my electronics industry which is more than balancing out this difference.

Does anyone know if it is possible to help with other great works or is it just the one near you mini-region of connected cities?

After far too many hours of trying, I have determined that it is impossible to have a 100% environmentally friendly electronics industry. I've got three maxed out recycling centers (that are still not managing to get 100% coverage on my city's recycle bins), and I'm still running a deficit on alloy and plastic usage for processor, TV, and PC manufacturing (about 15 tons daily on alloy, 1000 or so crates on plastic). I tried importing alloy and plastic to augment the recyclers, but that pushed me into the red, even with my electronics sales, since it imports 2 or 3 shipments of each for every one shipment of TVs, Computers, or processors that export. You could probably micro manage the shit out of it and turn a profit, but that's crazy. Now that I think of it, importing them into a trade depot instead of a trade port might bottleneck the shipments enough to work, too.

But I'm going to dump one of my recyclers, re-open a smelting plant and try importing ore and coal for alloy production and see if that ends up being profitable.

And I can't even imagine how it's possible to not run a budget deficit and retain an educated populace. I'm at -40,000/hr (eking out profit on electronics sales), and short of turning off all of my public services (except power and water) AND raising taxes to insane levels there's no way I can keep a surplus. And if I did that, the surplus would last all of six in game hours before businesses started shutting down and people started moving out, and then I'd find myself in the red again.